All the roads to walk
by Cyblade Silver
Summary: Not even Sauron was entirely evil; what if, before he had met Morgoth, he and Gandalf had been friends?
1. The Wolves of Dol Gûldor

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, the Hobbit, or anything owned by the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien; that all belongs to his heirs. I'm going to be using the book's timeline for the "LotR" sections of this story, but as I'm coming to like the movie version of The Hobbit more than the book, that's the one I'm going to be using for the relevant sections there. This, as you might have suspected from the summary, is an AU. As well, this story marks my first serious foray into the Lord of the Rings fandom._

_My first __humorous__ foray was some time ago. ;)_

**All the roads to walk**

When he returned to the Enemy's fastness of Dol Gûldor, leading Saruman and Radagast into the deep places of the fortress, Gandalf could not help the worry that he felt. He had seen Aulëndil in this place before; seen his fellow Istar chained at hand and neck in the lowest dungeons of the ruined tower, and while he had no desire to see such a thing again, he _was_ determined that none of their own would be left in such a place. Particularly not within the very stronghold of one of the Enemy's most powerful servants.

Not in the citadel of the Witch-king, even abandoned as it had been for so long.

The three of them moved quickly through the corridors of the ruined fortress, and Gandalf allowed the sense that he had developed of Aulëndil and where he was to guide his movements. He found, however, that while he could sense his younger-looking friend down in one of the lower dungeons, he could _also_ sense – if a great deal more weakly – another place where Aulëndil might have been. It was merely a shadow, an echo, of his friend's presence.

Clearly, it was something created by the Witch-king; made to confound anyone who had come to this place with the intent to bring Aulëndil out of it.

Dismissing the echo of Aulëndil's presence, Gandalf continued on his way deeper into the dungeons of Dol Gûldor.

Soon, he had found Aulëndil himself. The form of his student was not restrained in any fashion this time, but given Aulëndil's condition when Gandalf had discovered that his presence in Dol Gûldor was _not_ in fact because he had chosen to side with the Enemy – heavily emaciated, lips cracking from dryness, his golden-yellow eyes already beginning to develop a milky film – Gandalf found that he was not surprised to find him in such a state.

As he knelt down beside Aulëndil's crumpled form, pulling back the ragged sheet that had been carelessly thrown over it, Gandalf gently brushed his long, matted hair away from his face.

_No… I have said this before, Witch-king: I will _not_ serve you and your Master! No matter what you do to me._

_I am very glad to hear that, Aulëndil,_ he said, gently stroking the upturned left side of his student's face. _I am sorry, though, for what you have suffered here._

…_Olórin?_ Aulëndil moved fitfully; Gandalf's eyes narrowed, as he caught sight of the small pool of blood beneath the right side of his friend's head. _…No. No; I am still dreaming. I will _not_ yield to you, Morgoth! Do you hear me?! …I will not…_

_Take what rest you need, Aulëndil,_ he said, continuing to stroke his friend's face for another moment, before gently rolling his student over on his back.

The right side of Aulëndil's face was smeared with blood – both old and new – and as Saruman and Radagast both settled down on either side of him, Gandalf gently wiped his student's face as clean as he could manage with the sheet that had been so carelessly thrown over him. What he found there, under the blood and the matted hair that had been stuck to it, made him feel a deep swell of sorrow and pity.

And rage also, but that was all directed at the Enemy and his servants.

"Eru, have mercy on the boy; he tries so hard to be of service," Radagast said, gently stroking the right side of Aulëndil's face; the side that was almost entirely covered in old, dried blood.

That side was beginning to become covered with fresh blood, as it dripped sluggishly from the empty socket that had once held Aulëndil's right eye.

…_Aiwendil? Curumo? … I am _not_ dreaming?_

"No, Aulëndil, you are not," Saruman said, firmly but kindly all the same. "Come," Saruman continued, directing his attention toward himself and Radagast, then. "We should see to it that the youngest of our Order is removed from this place as swiftly as possible."

As Saruman gathered Aulëndil into his arms, as gently as was possible considering their need for haste, Gandalf turned his attention back to the shadow of his friend's presence that he had previously sensed.

"You have sensed it as well, haven't you, Gandalf?" Saruman said, nodding once to him. "There is something else in this place; go and find it, Radagast and I will attend to Aulëndil."

"Yes," he said, bowing slightly.

The sense of Aulëndil's presence, that echo that he had sensed when the three of them had first come into this horrid place, lead Gandalf deeper into the abandoned fortress. As he felt Saruman and Radagast leaving Dol Gûldor with Aulëndil, Gandalf breathed more easily; not only would his student be safe from whatever terrors remained within this – the Enemy's own stronghold – but he would also be able to track the echo of his student's presence more easily.

Following the echo as quickly as he could, Gandalf found himself making his way into the deeper parts of Dol Gûldor; deeper even than the dungeon that he had found Aulëndil in, deep into the pits under the fortress. There, he began to hear the sounds of a creature in despair, as well as the light steps of a wolf. It was the wolf, oddly enough, that carried the echo of Aulëndil's presence. He knew well that his student favored wolves above most other animals, but this animal felt… tainted in some way.

It did not sound like any kind of Warg that he had ever heard, but for all that it did not feel akin to one of the wolves that his student was so fond of.

Moving farther, deeper under the fortress that the Witch-king of Angband had erected in service to his Dark and terrible master, Gandalf found himself coming down to the largest of the pits underneath the fortress. There, he found an old Dwarf – clearly tortured and seemingly mad – and a snarling wolf pacing around him. The wolf snarling and circling the Dwarf bore far more than merely a passing resemblance to the form Aulëndil wore when he traveled as a wolf, and as Gandalf moved closer to the pitiful form of the Dwarf, he saw that this new wolf was just gathering itself to leap.

Grabbing the wolf by the scruff of its neck, just as it had completed the apex of its leap, Gandalf watched the creature writhe and twist in his grip. It seemed as if the wolf was more interested in the Dwarf than anything else, and when he looked toward the pitiful form of the Dwarf in the largest pit, he found that he bore the marks of a wolf's cruel teeth.

"Be still, fell creature!" he commanded, roughly shaking the writhing wolf he held by the scruff of the neck.

"You… you are not one of _his_," the Dwarf said, looking at him with eyes that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Aulëndil's during the time he had first discovered his student chained and starving in the dungeons of this place.

"No; no, I am not," he paused for a moment, feeling a great swell of pity for the Dwarf down in the pit before him. He didn't allow such a thing to show on his face, of course; Dwarves were a proud people, and even one in such a state as this would not appreciate a show of pity. "Do you think you can stand, Master Dwarf?"

"No… no, I do not think I will be leaving this place, old wizard," the ragged, haggard Dwarf said, turning a look of furious distain on the wolf still weakly struggling in his grasp. "I would ask a favor of you, before I leave for the Halls of Mahan."

"Ask, and if it is within my power, I will do it, Master Dwarf," he said; it was the last thing that he could do for this unfortunate Dwarf.

"Thank you, Master Tharkûn," the haggard Dwarf said, reaching into the old robes that he wore. "I would have you deliver this map, and the key I have here, to my son."

"Could I have his name, then, Master Dwarf?"

"I am afraid that I cannot recall that, Master Tharkûn," the haggard Dwarf said, looking for a handful of moments utterly defeated. "I find that I can not even recall my own name, after so much time in such a place."

"I am truly sorry that you have come to this end, Master Dwarf," he said, taking the map and the key as the bundle was handed over to him.

"My lot has been better than some others of my people, but yes; in the end, I would have preferred to have a long life with my kin."

"So would we all," he said softly, as the haggard Dwarf sagged back to the bottom of the pit.

That only left him to deal with the wolf still dangling in his grip. And _deal with_ the creature he would. He had clearly seen marks of a wolf's teeth on the old Dwarf's face and hands; he would not have been honestly surprised to discover them on Aulëndil, as well.

It would have been just like Morgoth, to threaten someone with a thing that was so intrinsic to them as Aulëndil's love of wolves was to him.

"Now, beast, it comes to you," he said, wishing for a moment that he had Radagast's skill for speaking with beasts, or even Aulëndil's own talent for understanding the minds of wolves.

There was also the matter of the presence he felt: the echo of his student that this wolf carried even now.

It was as strong now as it had ever been, and had he not been fully aware that his student was even now being taken from this horrid place by two of his fellow Istari – one of them the leader of the White Council – Gandalf would have thought that Aulëndil was still somewhere close.

As the wolf continued to twist in his grip, even as he dragged the beast away from the pit where the haggard Dwarf sat with his remaining time dwindling away, Gandalf noticed for the first time that – in spite of how the creature twisted in his grip, pulling its lips back to display sharp, white teeth – the wolf had not made the slightest sound. Not a snarl, nor growl, nor even the rasp of breath that every living creature had.

Turning the wolf's head so that he could get a closer look at it, Gandalf saw to his surprise that this wolf had merely a pair of red stones in place of eyes. True, he had often heard his student's eyes compared to fire opals, but to see a pair of red stones shoved into the eye-sockets of a living wolf… it was plain that this poor beast had been driven just as mad as any of the prisoners in this place.

Truly, Morgoth's capacity for cruelty knew no bounds.

However, when he attempted to calm the animal down, so that it would not injure either him or itself in its mad thrashing, Gandalf noticed a line of crude stitches extending down the wolf's belly. When the wolf attempted to bite him once more, Gandalf hurled the creature against the far wall. He had merely intended to stun it, giving himself the time to at least _attempt_ to calm the animal before he made to remove it from this fell place, but the impact caused the pair of stitches at the base of the creature's neck to burst.

There was a small puff of… straw? _Straw? From a wound?_ Moving closer, pinning the struggling wolf to the cold stone of the floor with his staff so that he could examine the creature more closely, Gandalf saw that the stitches extended over the wolf's entire belly, down to the base of its tail. This level of cruelty was beyond even what he had come to expect from Morgoth; to say nothing of his servants.

Kneeling down beside the wolf as it continued to writhe on the floor, Gandalf examined the stitching down the wolf's belly. What he saw beneath the two stitches that had burst open was indeed straw; he did not know just how that was possible, but he was determined to find out. Still, no matter how he tried to calm the creature, to at least ease _some_ of the pain that the creature was clearly feeling, Gandalf found that all of his efforts seemed to be in vain.

When the maddened wolf attempted once more to bite him, Gandalf was forced to slam the creature into the stone floor to stun it. Three more of the stitches burst open from the impact, and Gandalf was finally able to see just how true his first impression of the creature was. The wolf that he had encountered in this accursed place was no true creature at all: its body was filled with straw and fell herbs, and as he concentrated more of his attention on it, Gandalf found that the creature that he had taken to be a maddened wolf was only a construct with the barest semblance of life.

_So, now it becomes clear,_ he reflected, slamming his staff into the false wolf's belly, and causing fully half of the remaining stitches to burst open. Straw spilled like a mockery of blood from the damage that he had inflicted on the mockery of the form Aulëndil wore when he traveled as a great hound. One last strike from his staff burst the remaining stitches holding the Witch-king's fell, filthy mockery of not only Aulëndil's favored form for traveling swiftly about his errands, but every one of the hounds who his student had gathered about him.

Flinging the wolfskin, emptied now of the straw and fell herbs that had channeled the mockery of life that the horrifying construct had been imbued with, against the far wall of the room hard enough to burst its remaining stitches and fling the red stones from its eyes across the floor. The remaining mockery of life that this construct of the Witch-king had been imbued with ebbed away, and Gandalf gathered himself to deal with the remains of it. It was a foul thing – something that should have never existed in the first place – and the sooner he could rid the world of another of the Witch-king's fell works, the better off everyone would be.

When his fingers brushed the inside of the wolfskin, however, Gandalf was nearly overwhelmed with a sense of _pain_ the feeling of _cutting, tearing_- he pulled his hand away, staring down at the emptied wolfskin with new understanding. It made sense now, how maddened the false wolf had acted; if this was the pain that had been necessary to imbue the Witch-king's fell construct with even the semblance of life that it had been given when he had first encountered it – and likely as not while it had been tormenting the Dwarf whose name he did not know – Gandalf could fully understand what it was that he had been facing.

And he was made even more certain that it had to be destroyed.

Steeling himself to what he would feel when he laid his hand atop the wolfskin, Gandalf reached down to take it from the floor. When he did, he saw – as if in a waking dream – the wolf that the skin he was now holding had been torn from. He nearly recoiled in disgusted horror, even as steeled as he had been for what he might have seen. Even as depraved as Morgoth and all of his servants, and even knowing that the Witch-king of Angband had _chosen_ to give himself over to the Enemy willingly, he had not been prepared for this level of sheer depravity.

He could see _Aulëndil in his long-legged hound form – perfect for crossing long distances when he would run errands or carry messages, or even when he simply desired to be alone with his thoughts – on his back, splayed out across a heavy table made of fire-blackened stone. The Witch-king and Morgoth's own Nazgûl stood with him, arrayed around the table and staring down at the supine form writhing on the table. The Witch-king raised a blackened, razor-sharp knife, and drove it into the throat of Aulëndil's hound form._

_The Nazgûl to the Witch-king's left and right held Aulëndil's head still, so that his desperate thrashing – restrained as it was by the leather thongs binding his legs to the legs of the table he had been forced down upon – would not end up tearing out his own throat. The Witch-king drew his fire-blackened knife down Aulëndil's neck and across his belly, and down to the base of his madly thrashing tail. When the fell, cruel Man began to peel Aulëndil's flesh away from his struggling form-_ Gandalf forced his mind away from the horrors that had been revealed to him through the lingering remains of Aulëndil's presence that had remained even through the… abomination that had been created using them.

Mastering himself after a few moments of deep, seething rage at what he had witnessed – even second-hand as it was – Gandalf gathered up the wolfskin and shook the remaining straw and herbs free from it. _I am truly sorry you were forced to suffer through that, Aulëndil. I will see to it that you are given the best care while you recover,_ Gandalf vowed silently. He would burn the wolfskin once he was finally out of this fell place and away from everything even remotely associated with the Enemy and his servants.

He was not about to leave even one part of his student's – his _friend's_ – mortal body behind where any servants of the Enemy's could do as they pleased with it; even destroyed, there was too much of a chance that the Witch-king could cause Aulëndil harm or pain with even the ashes. He would not allow that to happen, not after everything that he knew his student had been forced to endure.

Not after seeing what he already had.


	2. Faithful of Aulë

As he carried Aulëndil out of the Witch-king's ruined tower, Saruman frowned as he watched Radagast fuss over him. He could not avoid the realization that he had had, looking down at the blood soaked visage of one he had called brother in the past: Mairon would have never been wounded so, and neither would Curumo have been so helpless as Saruman felt now.

Curumo and Mairon would have easily been able to deal with anything the Enemy chose to send against them; particularly considering the way that Morgoth had dispersed so much of himself through those thralls that he held.

Instead, all Saruman could do was to carry Aulëndil – his face smeared with blood, his right eye missing, and a bloody rag shoved into his mouth – out of the crumbling tower of Dol Gûldor, and watch in mild annoyance as Radagast fussed over him. He had never been particularly fond of Yavanna's people, and even when he had still been Aiwendil, Saruman had not truly approved of Radagast. If Yavanna had not been so insistent…

Still, the fact remained that she had been, and as one of the Valier – even if she had _not_ been Aulë's spouse – it was and had been his duty to abide by her dictates, no matter his personal feelings on the matter.

"Oh dear." Looking up sharply, irritated to have been disturbed by the inane chatter of one who was not even one of his peers. "Saruman, look."

Looking down at the ravaged form he was carrying in his arms, Saruman found that the damage was worse than he had realized at first: without the concealing effect of the blood soaked cloth, he could now see the shredded remains of Aulëndil's gums. He could also see the still-bleeding holes where his peer's teeth had been wrenched out.

"I- I would not have thought that even the Enemy could have been so cruel," Radagast said, lips quivering as if he was about to weep.

Unseemly as it was, if Saruman had not possessed such iron control over his emotions, he might have wanted to do the same. Aulëndil was _his_ peer, and while Mairon and Curumo had not been the closest of compatriots when they had both lived in Aman, the fact remained that they were both, in the end, members of Aulë's house. Aulëndil's chosen name spoke as much; his peer was indeed faithful.

"May he have an eternity in the Void in recompense for his crimes," he said, turning his gaze from Aulëndil's ravaged body so that he could make his way out of this fell, befouled place at last.

As Radagast paced him, muttering healing spells in Quenya, Saruman began planning just what he would need to aid Aulëndil in his healing.

_Curumo? Is this real?_

_Yes, Aulëndil, it is very real,_ he said, deciding against correcting his peer while he was still drifting in a haze of pain from his torment. _We are here, and we are indeed removing you from this place._

For a few moments, only the sounds of Aulëndil's rasping breaths and Radagast's mutterings in Quenya filled the air; Saruman held Aulëndil closer, offering what comfort he could.

_Curumo, I would ask a boon of you._ Aulëndil seemed to be growing steadily more lucid; still, the return of his reason was not a thing to be celebrated in this case, for it also meant that he was now far more aware of the torments that had been inflicted on his mortal body. Far more aware of the pain he was in.

_What would you ask of me, Aulëndil?_

_Kill me,_ Aulëndil's breath rasped harshly, mouth opening to reveal his ravaged tongue as he panted for breath. _This mortal body is dying; please, send me home._

_Aulëndil, what happened to your tongue?_ he asked, gently holding his peer's jaw open so that he could see the damage that had been done better. The tip was bitten off, and a small chunk on the left had also gone missing.

_I was starving; my mortal body was breaking, I needed to eat _something_._

_I see,_ he returned. _So, it seems that the Enemy is even more insidious than anyone anticipated,_ he mused, as Radagast tucked another cloth – this one clean, thankfully – into Aulëndil's still sluggishly bleeding mouth.

_Please, Curumo; send me home. _Aulëndil's voice, beginning to become weaker as the torments that had been inflicted on his mortal body dragged him down into the void of unconsciousness faded out then.

_Rest, Aulëndil,_ he said, as he sensed his peer losing consciousness fully once more.

_~UT~_

Wiping away the blood that was caked on Aulëndil's face, Radagast thought back to the herbs and plants that he had gathered back in Rhosgobel. He would likely need every one of them if he were to repair the damage that had been done to poor Aulëndil while the Enemy had held him.

He'd never once believed that the youngest – well youngest in appearance, in any case – of their number had _willingly_ entered into the Enemy's service; but, to see for himself what Aulëndil had gone through… He could only wish, though he knew that such wishes were folly, that they had been able to act sooner.

Gandalf appeared then, a furious expression on his face and a bundle of fur clutched under his left arm, and Radagast looked to him curiously. "What is that skin you're carrying?"

"The Enemy used it to torment a Dwarf who had fallen into his grasp, and Aulëndil as well," Gandalf said, his tone nearly a snarl. "He used Aulëndil to create this… _abomination_."

"_Used_ him?" he repeated. "What do you mean by _that_, Gandalf?"

"The Witch-king flayed the flesh from Aulëndil's body; with it, a bale of straw, and fell herbs that I will not name here, he created a base mockery of Aulëndil's hound form. I do not know how long that… thing existed, but I _will_ see the remains destroyed; the ashes scattered wide and long."

Gasping, Radagast felt tears beginning to run down from his eyes. Moving closer to Aulëndil – _away_ from the horrid thing that had been patched together from parts of his young-appearing friend's mortal form – Radagast continued to keep pace with Saruman as the leader of their Order proceeded the three of them out of Dol Gûldor.

"That would seem to go a long way toward explaining the boy's missing teeth," Saruman said.

Radagast winced; seeing inside Aulëndil's mouth that first time had been a cruel reminder of just what the Enemy was capable of. To think that what they had all seen this day was not the end of things…

"Will you allow me to examine this wolfskin that you found, Gandalf?" Saruman asked, drawing Radagast's attention back to the skin that Gandalf held.

"I do not think that Aulëndil should be brought any closer to this tool of the Enemy's than he has been in the past," Gandalf said, looking with distain down at the bundled skin he held under his arm.

"Very well," Saruman said. "Radagast, will you take him?"

"Of course," he said, hurrying over to collect Aulëndil's slumbering form from the head of their Order.

As he settled down at the base of a large rock, leaning against it so that he could try to draw at least _some_ strength from the earth to do what he needed to, Radagast looked up briefly to watch the exchange between Gandalf and Saruman as they spoke. Then, turning his attention back to Aulëndil, Radagast drew what little extra power he could from this fell, tainted place, and began to recite the healing spells that he had learned at the feet of Yavanna and her handmaidens.

It was clear that he would need a great deal of his power to even _begin_ to put right the damage that had been done.

_~UT~_

As he unfolded the bundled wolfskin so that Saruman could take a closer look at it, Gandalf had begun to wonder at the way the head had continued to hold its shape through the journey that he had made. It could not have merely been due to the shape of the… pelt. When Saruman began peeling the long-dead flesh of the pelt back from the head, Gandalf saw fire-blackened iron showing through the opening.

"So, it becomes clear now," Saruman said, as he removed the construct from the pelt and held it up for inspection.

There were indeed teeth fused onto the blackened iron that had been shaped into a mimicry of the skull of Aulëndil's hound form, and as Gandalf beheld the foul thing, he had to almost physically restrain himself from clenching his fists. _Truly, I am sorry for what you have suffered, Aulëndil,_ he said to his oldest and dearest friend. Turning away from Saruman as he continued examining the remains of the foul construct that he had recovered from Dol Gûldor, he looked to where Radagast was sitting.

He saw that the Brown was attending to Aulëndil, and he was grateful for that. Aulëndil would need all the kindness that the Order and those outside of it could provide for him. It was good to know that Radagast and Saruman understood the value of such a thing; he sometimes did not expect such things of Saruman, who seemed to value strength above all other things. Particularly when he spoke of dealing with the Enemy and his depredations.

As the four of them left the Enemy's forest stronghold behind once more, Gandalf found himself wishing for a long, worrying moment, that he could cast down the walls of the tower himself. It was not often that he felt such things, but then it was not often that he was forced to bear witness to the results of such base cruelty. Even seeing Orcs, knowing as he did what had been done to make them as they were now, did not affect him so much as seeing Aulëndil in this state.

He supposed that it was simply easier to truly feel compassion for someone you actually knew.

Turning to leave, not wanting to take a second look at the tower where so much evil had been done – both in the past, and even now in front of his own eyes – Gandalf fell into step behind the fretting form of Radagast and the quickly-moving form of Saruman.

_~UT~_

He could feel, distantly through the haze of pain that still enveloped him, those around him speaking of matters that he could not quite understand. His mind drifted off, somewhere in a safe place, somewhere that was beyond all of the pain that he knew he should have been feeling. He was glad not to be prey to the pains of his mortal body anymore, but he still wondered where he was.

_You are safe, Aulëndil. Here, in Imladris._

_And who are you, to tell me such a thing?_

Mairon thought, for a moment, that he could feel a warm, gentle pressure against his head, something that allowed him to feel truly safe for the first time in a great long while. _I promise you, Aulëndil, you are safe here. For now, merely rest and let yourself be healed. I will be with you, if you but call for me._

_I thank you for that,_ he responded, still not entirely certain where he was now, but reasonably sure that he would be safe while he rested.

He did not know how long he had been drifting, nothing around him but the soft light – light that reminded him a great deal of his lost home – but he was brought closer than he had lately been to awareness by the feeling of something warm. It was not a warmth that pressed down on him, as the one that he had taken note of before, but a warmth that seemed to flow into him from some outside source. He wondered for a moment just what he could be feeling, but then Mairon found himself drifting again, and such things became unimportant.

Awareness had become an uncertain thing, wherever and whenever he was now; he thought that it might still be Imladris, but as he had no real way of knowing, Mairon decided not to trouble himself with such thoughts. Other thoughts, those he had once managed to distract himself from with his duties, his studies, and running so long and so far that his mortal body was exhausted enough to allow him to sleep without his fears, and his doubts circling round and round inside his mind as if they were carrion birds waiting for a poor, wounded beast to finally fall.

And, it seemed as though he _had_ fallen, at last.

He could clearly remember, even after all of the time that had passed, the day he had left Aman in the company of his fellow Istari. He had not been one of those tasked with aiding the Free Peoples in their struggle against Morgoth and his depredations; he had in fact asked to go, having felt rather at loose ends where he was. Oh, Aulë had not been unkind – far from it, in fact – but in some ways his gentle, well-meaning disapproval was even worse than if he _had_ been cold and cruel.

Mairon knew that – for all his skill at metalworking – he was not particularly _good_ at his craft; he could not help but know it, after Master Aulë had disparaged each and every one of his works as flawed; disparaged them as kindly and generously as he ever had, yes, but in its own way such kindness was all the more painful. If his Master had been harsh, or critical, or even simply angry, Mairon would have felt perfectly justified in answering his Master's fury with the fury that had been simmering inside him when the two of them had first spoke about the his works.

The kindness that Master had shown to him during that time, however, had caused Mairon's fury to melt like snow in the face of high summer, leaving him feeling hollow and uncertain in its wake.

Every time he and Master Aulë had spoken after that had only served to cause the emptiness that he had felt inside him to grow. Eventually, it had threatened to consume him. He had met Olórin then; just when the emptiness had been eating away at the last of him. Their friendship had been one of convenience at first: Mairon needing something to hold to, and Olórin simply being himself.

It had been enough, at the time; just what he had needed, to begin attempting to recover what he had lost. That was, in the end, why he had asked to be allowed to accompany the other Istari to Arda; he had not been so arrogant as to presume himself included among their number, but all the same he _had_ wished to accompany them. In the end, it had been Olórin who had spoken in his favor, and he who had actually managed to convince them to allow him to accompany the Istari as one of their number rather than simply traveling with them as a companion of sorts.

Even now, he was still unsure about his place with them; he'd not even managed to create the right kind of body for himself when all of them had taken flesh before their journey to Arda; Olórin – called Gandalf – had taken him on as a student. Mairon still did not quite understand his fellow Maia's reason for doing such a thing.

As the warmth that he had once felt came back to him, Mairon found himself drifting away once more; his thoughts ebbing away like the tide, and he was grateful once more for small mercies.


End file.
